Budget office to keep ’em honest

The government is displaying considerable hypocrisy in spending taxpayers’ money to prevent The Australian Financial Review from revealing grubby details of its handouts to car companies, while at the same time selectively leaking work it has ordered from its bureau­cracy to embarrass its political opponents.

In reference to the leaking of Treasury costings of ­opposition policies this week, Finance Minister
Penny Wong
shamelessly maintained yesterday that there was clearly a “public interest’’ in knowing what Treasury said about ­opposition policies. The public deserved to know, she said. Instead, Ms Wong should spend her energy ­eliminating wasteful government handouts that are wrecking the budget and undermining productivity.

Government leaks of Treasury costings of opposition policies helped produce the farce of the 2010 election campaign when ­neither side had all their policies properly costed in time for voters to make a rational choice between the two of them. The opposition even tried to circumvent Treasury by using two little-known Perth accountants to cost its policies.

It is critical that this does not happen again, and the newly minted Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) is designed as an independent body to check those costings, as well as undertake much-needed checks of Treasury’s estimates. As reported in this newspaper today, the office will investigate the long-term sustainability of 80 per cent of the Commonwealth’s spending programs and $120 billion in annual tax breaks. The bottom line is that Australia needs credible and independent institutions to maintain viable budget policy. Regrettably, Labor is undermining Treasury’s credibility by thrusting it into partisan debate.

While Treasurer
Wayne Swan
’s office yesterday admitted it had leaked the department’s costing of opposition policies, Treasury has fought freedom of information applications made by members of the Coalition frontbench to keep the costings of Greens policies away from the public gaze.

Given that history, it is far from surprising that shadow treasurer
Joe Hockey
immediately condemned reports citing Treasury analysis that found that three of the Coalition’s tax policies would cost Australian businesses $4.57 billion in their first full year of operation. Those policies are a 1.5 per cent levy on big companies to pay for paid parental leave, the axing of various tax breaks, and the abolition of a tax refund for small, unprofit­able businesses.

To end this political game-playing over costings and to avoid budgetary disasters such as those we see today in Europe and the United States, we need an independent body such as the PBO to play a serious role in keeping politicians honest about their promises and how they propose to pay for them.